


I Need Your Help

by Kittycattycat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittycattycat/pseuds/Kittycattycat
Summary: …But until the day I die, I'll pretend I never did. (A quick "what if?" drabble about what would have happened if Equius hadn't helped Vriska when she lost both her eye and arm. One chapter from Equius' point of view, another from Vriska's, both in third-person limited.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> The majority of this dialogue is taken from the few preview pages available of the comic "Vrisky Business," which was created primarily by two people, one being Andrew Hussie, and can be found on the Paradox Space website.

It all started with a bang on his door. Well, not really. It was technically a knocking against the doorframe of what would have been a door had he actually been able to open them properly without destroying them. He had yet to replace that one. He doubted that he ever would, honestly. Too much trouble.

Anyways, all that was beside the point.

"Heeeeeeeey, neighbor…!" he heard a familiar voice say in a singsong tone.

Equius didn't even look up from his work, too engulfed in his latest set of blueprints to listen to whatever it was she had to say.

"Are you busy?" Vriska asked, clearly ignoring the fact that he was trying not to pay attention to her, "I mean, of course you are! You're always busy, what with all your robots!" she ended her sentence with a strangely fake laugh. 

He debated in his head whether she meant that as an insult or an irregular statement, finally deciding that the consideration it took to reach a conclusion wasn't worth his time. 

"Say, do you think I could borrow a cup of spiders?" she asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her lift up a measuring cup. When had she gotten that, and from where…?

"Why do you want spiders?" He asked hesitantly, not sure of he should respond to her obviously ludicrous request or not.

"Um. I dunno! That's my thing, right?" there was an uncomfortable pause, "…Spiders."

"I love spiders. Just like you like horses and stupid shit like that!" 

He growled under his breath. Did she, this midblooded fool, really come here to sling petty insults in his general direction?

"Look," she began after an especially pertinent bout of silence, lifting up her measuring cup to collect the…was that blood running off of her face? "Let's just agree that me asking for a cup of spiders is a totally plausible request, and drop it."

"You know what? Fuck spiders!" she yelled suddenly, "…and fuck this cup, too." she added after a moment, tossing the bloody cup behind her. She began walking towards his work bench, a trail of cobalt drips and splatters following closely behind her.

"We've lived next to each other for all these sweeps, and we never hang out." she mused, "I wanna be neighborly for a change!" 

After receiving no response, she went on, "Neigh-borly. Get it?" as if he still didn't, "Like a god damned horse noise!" this, too, was followed by a wheezy, pathetic laugh.

Suddenly, Vriska pressed her face right against Equius', making him recoil from not only the physical contact itself, but the feeling of blood smearing against his cheek and, revoltingly, almost dripping into his mouth. Very quickly, he noticed that not only was blood dripping from her mouth, but from a gash across her formerly seven-pupiled eye and the bloody stump that once functioned as a left arm.

Keeping his focus on the robotics project laid out before him, he said nothing to her.

"So, how are you?"

Once more, he hesitated, "…Moist."

After a few, more important moments of consideration, he decided that she wouldn't leave without getting her story told, "What happened to your arm?"

She feigned surprise at his question, "Huh? What arm?"

"The one that is now missing from your body." he clarified, growing bored of her back and forth games.

"Oh!" she laughed again, more pathetic than ever, "That old thing? Nothing! It was nothing, really. I just stubbed it, is all."

"You stubbed your arm." Equius deadpanned.

"Yeah! You know how it is." she said nonchalantly, "You get carried away with something, slip on some dice or something, then whoops! You fall and stub a major appendage!" 

"Probably just needs a bit of patching up," she continued once more, her voice growing quieter, "maybe cybernetically speaking…"

She sprang up, somehow full of newfound vigor, "Who knows! It's no big deal, really."

"Hmm," he hummed, though more towards his work than Vriska. He placed a screw between his teeth for convenience, making sure not to clench his teeth so as to not bend or break the metal.

"Actually, why don't we forget about the arm for a second?" she asked, "Equius, we never really talk, do we? We live right next to each other. We should hang out more!"

"You are beneath me, and we share very few interests." he said, only half paying attention. He had grabbed the screw he previously held in his mouth and used it to fasten two shaped metal pieces together. Yes, this would serve well as an outside cover…

The cobalt-blooded girl burst out into a fit of outrageous laughter, only serving to further irritate Equius, "Oh man. Gotta say, I love your indigo snob shtick, it is a riot! Lmao."

"No, it is ordinary and unamusing." he quickly changed the subject, "What about your eye?"

"Huh?" 

"Your eye is missing, and there is a great deal of blood coming from the socket." 

It was true. A very large gash had been sliced over her eye, blood pouring down the left side of her face and staining both her clothes and the floor below her. Not only that, but her glasses had been entirely shattered on that side, leaving small chips of both glass and plastic sticking out of the wound.

"Oh! Right. Would you believe I actually forgot about it? It's amazing how quickly you get used to seeing out of just one eye." she shrugged, leaning against his shoulder, smearing more blood onto it, "Anyways, yeah. I stubbed that too."

"How does one stub an eye?"

"By like falling and shit! I dunno man, I just did!" she exclaimed, flailing her arms and grinning in a way that made Equius feel vaguely unsettled, "Look, this is all a little embarrassing for me, if you want to know the truth."

Finally, Equius turned around to face Vriska, using his signature move of abruptly changing the subject, "I heard a noise from your hive."

She rested her chin on the Newton's cradle situated on his work bench, blood pouring onto both it and the table, "Huh? What explosion?"

"Yes, it sounded like an explosion."

"Oh yeah. That was, uh…" she paused, looking around the room a bit, "Just a loud and relatively uninteresting incident which caused me to stub my arm and eye like the stupid fucking butterfingers I am." she managed, now gritting her teeth. He honesty couldn't tell if it was from anger or pain. Either way, not great.

"It's not important. Hey, lets steer the subject away from my embarrassing stubbing and massive ongoing blood loss and talk about you." she insisted, punctuating the end of her sentence by sharply poking a finger at his chest, "How are you doing, Equius?"

He growled in annoyance. Pools of her disgusting cobalt blood were collecting on his work table from the wounds on her face. She really wasn't going to leave, was she? "I already told you. Moist."

She laughed. Again. "Right! Yeah, you sure do sweat a lot. Hey, want me to go fetch you a towel, neighbor?"

"No," he replied flatly, tightening the bolt on his robot's arm, "my butler will bring me a towel at one of his scheduled intervals."

Vriska's face contorted into a displeased expression, "Oh yeah. I forgot about him." she said, disdain plain and obvious in her voice, "Must be nice, having a lusus that actually serves you instead of the other way around." 

She looked over to Equius once more, with the same strange expression she wore earlier, blood still dribbling from the corner of her mouth, "You've carved out a nice little life for yourself here, Zahhak. You run a tight ship. I'm impressed!"

Out of nowhere, tone shifted, voice becoming woozy and quiet, "Maybe a little jealous, to…be…" she trailed off.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash. The Newton's cradle she had been leaning on was broken as it fell onto the hard concrete floor of his hive. Vriska had fallen as well, splattering the ground with cobalt. Her glasses had fallen off, and her hair was splayed everywhere in a mass of black tangles.

He looked down at her body. There were a few things he could do. Leave her there, an unlikely option for him to choose, since that would be the equivalent of leaving a rotting corpse on his floor. Fix her arm and patch up here eye, which would be time-consuming and include actually helping her, but an altogether interesting project. And then, he could always…

Yes, that would do.

Grabbing her one remaining limp arm, he dragged her out his door. Then, aiming as best he could, tossed her forward. After a short, less-than-graceful flight through the air, her body crashed through the window leading to her room. Her problems were not his. Her lost arm, her missing eye, both were her own fault. Any glass cuts or injuries from the fall through the window were also due to her own negligence. If she had even stopped to think. She would've realized that there was no reason for him to help her at all.

He grimaced looking at the blood now staining both his hands and the floor of his room. He hoped Aurthor would be here soon to clean up a bit. He always was such a good butler. The best butler.

Yes, Miss Serket could either deal with her own problems herself or die trying, Equius Zahhak would make sure of it.


End file.
